Microsemi SoC Products Group recently introduced RTAX-S/L, the next generation designed-for-space antifuse field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). RTAX-S/L, with up to four million system gates, is SoC Products Group's highest density family, providing the space designer with nearly 250 k ASIC gates and error correction and detection (EDAC) protected static RAM. RTAX-S/L is the first SoC Products Group family designed for use in the ceramic column grid array (CCGA) package configuration. SoC Products Group has developed a low cost prototyping methodology for RTAX-S/L using the Axcelerator family of FPGAs.

Microsemi SoC Products Group provides radiation-tolerant FPGAs for space applications. However, since the enhanced environmental properties of radiation tolerant devices are not required during prototyping, inexpensive commercial equivalent devices can be substituted during this design phase. This application note describes the basic prototyping methodology for the space qualified RTSX-SU FPGA devices using the commercial equivalent SX-A FPGA devices. This application note includes the prototyping flow, prototyping package options, and other prototyping considerations.